On the Job: Walking the Field of The Big House

Photographers don’t live the high life. We don’t get the business-class seats on a work trip, but we do — sometimes — get amazing access to locations/perks that otherwise would have completely avoided us.

Today my job was to photograph Brock Mealer, a big University of Michigan football fan whose brother plays for the Wolverines, and who ironically studies in Ohio State University, Michigan’s biggest and most hated (an understatement) sporting rivals. Because he rubs shoulders with the players and coaches, sometimes he gets the opportunity to run the field after a home game. The powers that be want to feature him in the magazine, so after Michigan narrowly edged passed Indiana 36-33 today, we were allowed on the field for about 45 minutes. I just snapped away.

Although the day started off wet and miserable, the sun Gods were shining down on us when we got on the field. Blue skies and a mostly blocked sun rounded off the good fortune. Shooting at the stadium is a real peach because everything there is so symbolic (if you know the school and the tradition), so there wasn’t any dearth of shooting opportunities. My only nitpick was a few other people on the field made shooting angles a little trickier (so as not to have them in the photo) and I was not entirely successful in exclude unwanted details.

Being my first time on the field after more than a dozen times watching from the stands, I understood how much pressure the players are under, what with 100,000 pairs of eyes staring down at you. Far from what you may believe, The Big House doesn’t seem as majestic from the bottom than from all those aerial views from media balloons or even from the upper half of the stands. That said I still thoroughly enjoyed myself walking on the golden ‘M,’ the 50-yard line, and shuffling my shoes over the synthetic grass.